


Behind the Mirror

by ImprobableDreams900



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s05e22 Mirror Image, Fix-It, Gen, POV Minor Character, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Mirror Image” and the alternate ending...from the Bartender’s point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> (first fic!)
> 
> The dialogue is a mixture from the script and from the broadcast episode, but not all dialogue from the script/episode was used.
> 
> Spoilers for "Mirror Image"...Quantum Leap belongs to NBC

For five years, the Bartender had discreetly watched Sam leap through time and space, helping put right things that once went wrong. 

He never got too close, instead opting to watch from the sidelines, helping with a little leap-in here or a well-timed leap-out there. This time-traveler from the future, this Sam Beckett, was good at what he did. The Bartender gathered there was a hologram from his own time helping him, but this was of little consequence to the Bartender. The Bartender only cared about Leapers, so he had eyes only for Sam.

About two years in, the Bartender had decided to give this Sam a little break and send him home-- not to the Project in 1999 of course, but to Elk Ridge, Indiana in 1969. Little did the Bartender know that this would not be seen as a sabbatical for Sam, a resting point and a reward, but rather as a sort of torturous glimpse of what his life could be like.

But then imagine the Bartender’s surprise when Sam leapt from his home to Vietnam to save his brother. The Bartender thought Sam had discovered the great secret on his own, by choosing where to go when he leapt. But after Vietnam he returned to leaping erratically, and the Bartender sighed and turned his attention to other matters.

And then, miraculously, when the Bartender was looking the other way, Sam leaped home to 1999. It was a peculiar set of events that culminated in a new Leaper taking Sam’s place. The Bartender learned his name was Al and he had previously helped Sam from the future as a hologram. Privately the Bartender thought Sam had been better at getting the job done than this Al, who repeatedly ignored the people around him and spoke instead to thin air. But Sam was out of his reach now, back in his own time and no longer a Leaper, so the Bartender resigned himself to keeping an eye on this new Leaper instead. But, again much to his surprise, Sam leapt back into the past, returning Al to the future and again putting himself at the Bartender’s disposal. The computer in the future tried to leap Sam back almost right away, but the Bartender kept a firm hold on Sam and the computer’s efforts failed. It wasn’t that the Bartender didn’t want Sam to return home to the future, rather that the Bartender did not consider himself “finished” with Sam, and wasn’t willing to lose such a useful piece so easily.

So Sam continued leaping until his leaps totalled five years of service, and the Bartender decided he now owed it to Sam to let him in on the big secret and allow him to choose his own path. So when Sam leapt out of Memphis, the Bartender directed his leap to a small bar in a mining town in Pennsylvania.

Whether or not the bar was a real place was irrelevant, for the Bartender could inhabit both real and unreal places quite easily. So he made it a place both real and unreal, real enough so that Sam would feel at home, but unreal enough that he would believe what the Bartender told him.

It came as quite a surprise to the Bartender, upon his arrival in Pennsylvania, to discover that he was a bartender. You see, upon creating the real/unreal place in anticipation of Sam’s arrival, the Bartender took stray thoughts from Sam’s head and used them to fashion a world that was a direct reflection of Sam. Every part of it was a projection of Sam’s mind. They say you never dream faces you haven’t seen, that your brain reuses old faces you’ve passed on the street. And this dream is no exception. Even the time the bar is in-- the moment Sam was born-- is a reflection of Sam’s thoughts. What date do you know better and remember more often than that of your birth?

The Bartender chuckled to himself to discover that he was a bartender, and took note that his name was Al, the name of the...other...Leaper that time Sam had returned to the future. His face was unfamiliar to him, but supposed it must be familiar to Sam...indeed after some thought and probing of Sam’s unconscious mind he determined that the face belonged to a man Sam had met on his very first leap...fitting, the Bartender thought. 

And then Sam arrived, right in the doorway. He looked as confused as ever, and the Bartender studiously ignored him and went about wiping down glasses at the bar. Sam came over to the counter and ordered a drink, then turned to look in the mirror. The Bartender kept an eye on Sam, wondering what his reaction would be. Sam froze in surprise, and then looked positively perplexed. The Bartender wasn’t surprised in the least; what does the unconscious mind assume will be its reflection if not itself? 

The Bartender made a quip about Sam being surprised to see his own reflection, and Sam struggled ungracefully to recover. 

They went and looked at some of the WWII photos on the wall, then were interrupted by the arrival of one of the miners who the Bartender knew, in a way that was both real and unreal, was named Gushie. The long-bearded miner came in, took a drink, exhaled noisily on Sam, and walked straight back out the door.

“I guess I should have warned you. Gushie has the worst breath in Cokeburg,” the Bartender said, watching Sam closely for a reaction.

“Gushie? That guy’s name is Gushie?” Sam asked incredulously. The Bartender wondered how well Sam knew this other Gushie, but nodded nonetheless. 

Sam ran out the door immediately, and the Bartender shook his head, wondering how long it’d be before Sam realized things here were not as they seemed. He had his money on two hours.

Sam returned shortly, obviously perturbed by something he’d seen outside.

Sam asked again about Gushie. Then: “And your name is Al?”

The Bartender continued wiping down glasses, going along with Sam. “Albert,” he agreed.

“It’s not...Calavicci, is it?” Sam asked, hesitant and sounding a little frightened. 

“No, not Calavicci,” the Bartender replied slowly, watching Sam’s face get more confused, then smooth out into relaxed lines as he assumed it was all a coincidence. Humans were strange that way-- so unwilling to accept the truth even when it smacked them in the face.

Then Stawpah came in, and then Tonchi, and the Bartender played along as Sam got confused again, recognizing the latter’s face but not his name. 

They ganged up on him and demanded to see his wallet. Sam hurriedly produced it, but when he pulled it open to the sound of tearing Velcro, he froze. The Bartender practically pinpointed the moment on his face when he remembered that Velcro wasn’t commercialized until the early 60s. Then he opened the wallet, and Sam’s face was absolutely priceless as he saw his own driver’s license from 1998 staring back at him. The Bartender worked hard to convince himself that he wasn’t having too much fun with this.

The other miners came in and Sam sat down with one of them he appeared to recognize in the corner, watching a black-and-white TV. Sam took a drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The other miner mirrored him exactly, but Sam didn’t appear to notice. Humans. Figures.

The Bartender watched Sam out of the corner of his eye, realizing that Sam wasn’t going to figure this out on his own without some prompting. So the Bartender talked loudly with Stawpah, and let slip the word “ca-ca.” As hoped, Sam’s head snapped around like a dog’s at the sound of its name and within seconds he was confronting the Bartender about it.

“Common expression,” the Bartender fibbed, buying for time until the miners directed their attention elsewhere.

Once they had, the Bartender allowed Sam to demand some answers. Then, just to mess with Sam, he pushed a punchboard over to him.

“Like to take a chance? Cost you a nickel. You might hit the jackpot.”

Sam stared at him, trying to see past the Bartender’s assumed exterior, but he couldn’t. The Bartender allowed himself a smug smile as Sam turned his attention to the punchboard.

“What’s the jackpot?”

“Ten bucks. And the answer to your question.”

“Do you mean that?”

The Bartender shrugged. “Yes.”

Sam punched, but didn’t hit the jackpot. The Bartender shrugged again, this time noncommittally, and told Sam he’d have to find the answers to his questions himself. Of course the Bartender didn’t mean this, but there was nothing wrong with making Sam squirm for a little longer.

Sam went back to talk with the miners, and then all of a sudden the mine whistle blew. They all ran out, Sam included, and the Bartender carried on wiping his glasses as though nothing had happened.

They returned from the mine about an hour later, quiet and subdued. Sam stood by the window, staring off at nothing.

“You’re not here to save them,” the Bartender told him. Sam started and turned around, giving him a distrustful glare.

“How’d you know what I was thinking?”

“A good bartender has to be part philosopher, part psychiatrist, part psychic,” the Bartender told him smoothly.

“I’d like to talk to the philosopher part,” Sam said after a moment’s thought, and the Bartender, finding this an interesting method of approach, went along with it.

Sam asked again why he was here, getting a bit rougher this time.

The Bartender sighed and gave Sam his best enigmatic smile. “Why do you think you’re here, Sam?” This was just too much fun.

“No, no, no, no, that’s answering a question with a question-- that’s psychiatrist stuff,” Sam reminded him. “We‘re talking philosophy.”

The Bartender inclined his head in acknowledgment of a good point. “Who knows what Don Quixote can accomplish?” he asked mysteriously, intentionally referencing one of Sam’s earlier leaps.

Sam noticed right away, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Who are you?” he demanded again, but again the time was not right.

“A bartender,” he replied instead.

Sam and the miners headed out to retrieve Tonchi and Pete, who had been trapped in the mine, and Sam and Stawpah returned alone a little while later, having been the only two not to go down into the mine to help retrieve them.

Sam sat on the barstool, talking to the Bartender about Al. The Bartender was genuinely curious-- after all, this Al had once been a Leaper. His primary concern was Sam, though, and what effect this Al had had on him. 

“If I’m Don Quixote, then Al is my Sancho,” Sam said sadly. “There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me.”

“Or you for him,” the Bartender continued for Sam. Something about this Al person had Sam worried and feeling guilty. The Bartender wanted to get it all straightened out before he talked to Sam about what was going to happen next.

“Or me for him,” Sam agreed. After a moment: “That’s not true, though, I--. There was a time once when he wanted me to do something for him and I didn’t.”

“Could you have done it?” the Bartender asked, feeling they were getting close to the heart of the matter.

“I could have tried,” Sam replied morosely. 

The Bartender waited patiently, but when Sam showed no signs of continuing, asked, “Why didn’t you try?” 

“I wasn’t there to save his marriage to Beth,” Sam explained. “I was there to save an undercover cop from being killed.”

The Bartender remembered the leap. He realized what must have happened in the conversation by the tree outside Beth’s house, the conversation he only heard Sam’s half of. “So Beth thought Al was dead and married someone else,” he inferred. No wonder Sam was feeling guilty. “Because…” he trailed off to allow Sam to finish the thought.

“Because I always play by the rules,” Sam said despondently. 

Before the Bartender could say any more, the miners all rushed in, cheerful and with Tonchi and Pete safe in their midst. Sam got pulled away to celebrate, and the Bartender watched as Stawpah leaped in a burst of blue light. To the Bartender, it wasn’t a big deal. It was he who had brought Stawpah here in the first place, to the real and unreal place where Sam was now, brought him here to show Sam his future.

The Bartender watched as Sam confronted the miners about Stawpah, but they couldn’t remember him.

The miner named Gushie came back in, and told Sam that Stawpah died in 1933. 

Sam returned to the bar once again, staring into the mirror, more confused than ever. Gushie came up beside him and Sam did a double take; the reflection in the mirror was not Gushie’s. The Bartender watched Sam, wondering if he would notice that the other faces he had recognized, the ones known to Sam as Ziggy, Tonchi, and Pete, were not reflected faithfully either. 

Gushie moved off and the Bartender stepped in, deciding he’d tortured Sam long enough.

“Can you accept what you see as reality?” he asked, wiping down the bar with an off-white cloth.

“Which reality do I accept?” Sam asked. “That one,” he indicated the mirror, “or that one?” he motioned behind him.

“Haven’t you accepted both?” the Bartender asked, watching Sam intently, “looking into all those mirrors?” He wondered if Sam would understand.

“You are the one who’s been leaping me, aren’t you?” Sam said triumphantly, and the Bartender sighed to himself. Humans could be so single-minded sometimes.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said, backtracking.

“Well, what would you say?”

“That he’s been leaping you through time,” the Bartender said, nodding his head in the direction of the mirror. Maybe Sam missed most of the points and hints the Bartender gave him, but surely he’d get this one without needing to have it spelled out for him? And here he was under the impression that Sam was a genius physicist!

“No. No no no. No way-- no way will I buy that,” Sam said, backing away. 

The Bartender picked up another glass and polished it, trying to keep his cool. He decided to try a different tack. “Why did you create Project Quantum Leap?” he asked.

“To travel in time,” Sam replied immediately.

“Why did you want to travel through time?” the Bartender prompted.

“Because I wanted to...to...ah,” he stammered.

“To make the world a better place?” the Bartender supplied.

“Of course. To make the world a better place.” Sam didn’t seem to understand where this was going.

“To put right what once went wrong?” Geez, he was going to have to spell it out.

“Yes, but not one life at a time,” Sam insisted.

“I’ve got Mother Teresa here,” he muttered to himself. “Do you really think that all you’ve done is change a few lives?” he asked Sam directly.

“Basically, yes,” he replied, and the Bartender could see the honesty in his eyes.

“At the risk of over-inflating your ego, Sam, you’ve done more. Much, much more. The lives you touched, touched others. And those lives, others. You’ve done a lot of good, Sam Beckett, and you can do a lot more.” Now came the choice for Sam. The Bartender had told him the secret-- that he was leaping himself-- and now the Bartender could only hope that Sam would continue on leaping to help others. But if Sam wanted to leap home now, the Bartender couldn’t and wouldn’t stop him.

“More?” Sam asked, looking just a little terrified. “I don’t want to do more. I want to go home.”

So that was the way it was going to be, then. Oh, well. It’d been nice having Sam, but he wasn’t going to force him to leap forever. He wasn’t that cruel. “Then why haven’t you?” the Bartender asked, leaning back in defeat. It was all just pleasantries now.

“Because I don’t control my future-- you do!” Sam said.

The Bartender about ready to slap Sam alongside the head. He really was going to have to spell it out for this kid. “Sam, you’ll only do this as long as you want to.”

“You’re saying I can leap home anytime I want?”

Now we’re getting somewhere!

“Technically, yes.”

“Technically? What’s the catch?”

“The catch is that you have to accept that you control your own destiny.”

Sam looked at the Bartender for a long moment, and the Bartender realized he was finally getting to him. Then, abruptly, Sam’s head snapped to the side. “Al!”

The Bartender made a noise of exasperation as Sam jumped off the barstool and ran out of the bar. This Al person really was getting in the way of things.

The Bartender took a moment to finish cleaning a few more glasses and have a joke with the miners, then went after Sam. He was sitting on the windowsill just outside the bar. The holographic Al seemed to have gone.

For a moment they talk about priests, and how they were allowed to take sabbaticals. Sam seemed to be beginning to understand. 

Then: “Where would you like to go, Sam?”

For a moment Sam was silent. “Home,” he said at last, and the Bartender saw he was beginning to cry. “I’d like to go home. But I can’t, can I? I’ve got a wrong to put right, for Al.” 

The Bartender merely smiled, realizing that Sam wasn’t going to go home at all, but that he was going to carry on putting right things that once went wrong, as the Bartender wanted him to. 

But this time he’d be going into the future, where the leaps would be more difficult. His holographic friend would be useless to him, because their computer would have no information for Al to relay to Sam. And since Sam would be leaping as himself from now on, there’d be no one for Sam to switch places with, no person to squeeze information out of or look after in 1999. And after he’d put right a wrong in the future, he’d disappear like Stawpah, and no one would remember him. He’d be flying entirely solo. He’d have no need for the Project.

But convincing Sam to break away from the Project hadn’t been easy, especially with Sam feeling guilty about one of the Project’s members. So the Bartender was alright with allowing Sam to go and bend a few rules so he could make his peace with everyone in 1999, so that he could continue leaping into the future to help others. 

“You knew, didn’t you?” Sam said, searching the Bartender’s face. He gave nothing away, but offered a satisfied smile. 

“God bless, Sam.”

And Sam leapt. 

The bar dissolved, existing as it had only in Sam’s mind, and the Bartender kept tabs on Sam as he leapt into a woman’s living room in 1969. 

And when Sam was ready, he leapt again, and this time the Bartender took ahold of him and gently guided his leap into the future, to a person in need of help...and to a bar, in fact, because coincidence was just too much fun.

And that should have been the end of it.

But it wasn’t.

What the Bartender had underestimated was the unwillingness of a certain hologram to “go quietly into that dark night” and be left at home, as it were, while his best friend leapt alone through time and space and into incalculable danger. 

Imagine the surprise on the Bartender’s face when all of a sudden he was back in the bar that was real and unreal and existed only in Sam’s mind...but without Sam.

Instead, he found himself across the bar from another Leaper entirely. The Bartender did a once over and realized that Sam’s holographic friend Al must have leaped into time himself to get here. 

Luckily, some of the miners engaged Al in conversation right away, talking about the baseball game playing on the radio, and the Bartender had a moment to compose himself. This was a wholly unexpected turn of events, and one he would have to play very close to the vest. He hadn’t cared much about Al when he was a hologram in 1999, but now he was a Leaper, and that made him the Bartender’s responsibility...after all, he had to ensure Al wouldn’t switch sides and go work for that other, darker entity that presided over the Leapers that went around in time putting wrong things that had once been right. 

In a moment the Bartender decided that, if he could convince Al to join his side and put right things that had gone wrong, he would consider himself as having done a good job and salvaged the situation.

Al extracted himself from the rowdy miners and made his way to the bar.

“What’ll it be?” the Bartender asked, regaining his unruffled exterior.

“Information,” the ex-hologram replied shortly, and the Bartender could tell he meant business. Evidently he had not interpreted Sam’s parting gift to him as a thanks-and-now-good-bye-old-friend, but instead as some sort of desperate plea for help.

The Bartender slid the punchboard across the table to him. “Five cents a punch. Hit the jackpot and I’ll answer your question.” He wondered if Al would take the bait. He rather doubted it.

“I have to gamble to get info from God?” Al asked, taken aback.

“Who said I was God?” the Bartender asked, genuinely curious.

“Sam did,” Al replied, in a tone that implied that if Sam said it, it must be true. “He said you were God or Time or Fate.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, the Bartender couldn’t help but laugh. The Bartender had met God, and was nothing like him. Obviously Sam had a bit of an overactive imagination. “Why not an alien while you’re at it?” he suggested offhandedly.

“Oh, my God,” Al said softly.

“What?”

“We didn’t even think of that,” he said, raising a hand to his forehead. “It all makes sense. You could be a higher intelligence from the outer reaches of the universe!”

“I’m afraid the only alien here is you, Al,” the Bartender said quickly, not wanting these humans to get any more off-the-wall ideas about who was running this show.

“Why me?” Al asked, evidently a bit insulted by the Bartender’s comment.

“Because you’re the only one that doesn’t belong here,” the Bartender said, and realized it made more sense than he had intended; Al was the only thing here that hadn’t been affected or entirely created by Sam’s imagination.

“What about Sam?” Al asked, looking around as if he half expected to find him hidden amongst the miners.

“He’s not here anymore,” the Bartender told him matter-of-factly. “He’s on the job.”

“In the future, right?”

The Bartender was taken aback-- how had he found out?-- but covered his surprise quickly. “Right.” Sam must have fallen off their sensors completely when he leaped forward-- perhaps that computer of theirs was cleverer than he gave them credit for.

“Without me!” Al said a little too loudly, and the Bartender began to realize there was more at work here than a simple professional relationship.

“I didn’t think you were needed,” the Bartender said levelly, and meant it. Sam could handle himself-- he had thus far.

“You didn’t think I was needed!” Al said incredulously, his voice going up on the last note. “Who flew the X-2? Me! Who taught him Elvis’ moves? Me! Who showed him how to box, shoot pool, draw a six-gun...kiss the girl!”

The Bartender considered for a moment, remembering each of Sam’s leaps, remembering how often he would listen to his holographic friend, and follow advice that came from thin air, and realized that what Al said was true. “You,” he allowed, though still amused to see him so up in arms about the whole thing. Surely he didn’t think Sam was so hopeless that he would die without him?

“You’re damn right, me!” Al said loudly, drawing a few looks from the miners behind him. “If you’re God, excuse the language,” he added quickly.

“If I’m God, you’re excused,” the Bartender said, amused, and picked up a glass to wipe down.

Al seemed to forget where he was for a moment, then started up again with “Sam wouldn’t have righted a single wrong if it wasn’t for me!”

The Bartender paused in his polishing and gave him a stern look.

“Okay, maybe one or two,” Al conceded, “but he needs me! And more importantly…I need him.”

The Bartender considered this for a moment, keeping his face carefully blank. He did think Sam would be alright on his own, but Al certainly would not allow himself to be sent off into the past or future to right wrongs if he thought Sam was in danger elsewhere. So he could either keep them separate and hope Al would get over it enough to do good by himself, or he could put them together, potentially lowering the amount of good that could be done but keeping Al happy and in line. He watched Al carefully as he slowly wiped at the glass in his hand. Sending Al into the future would be dangerous, but the look on his face declared that he would accept nothing less.

The Bartender sighed and put the glass down. “The past has been mere prologue,” he said carefully. “Where Sam has gone, there is great danger.” He wanted to make sure Al understood this, wanted to give him a chance to back out.

“Cut the Star Wars dialogue!” the ex-hologram said instead, and the Bartender began to understand why Sam liked him so much. “Are you going to send me with him or not?”

“You’d no longer enjoy the safety of a hologram,” the Bartender reminded him.

“I was kinda hoping that would continue,” Al admitted, but seemed to have expected it.

“You’d be a Leaper, like Sam, with all the inherent risks,” the Bartender continued.

“I still want to join him,” Al said stubbornly, and the Bartender decided he had made the right decision by not keeping them apart.

“That’s all it takes,” he said, leaning back and picking up the glass again. 

“What do you mean?” Al asked, appearing genuinely puzzled.

The Bartender smiled as he revealed the big secret again, twice in a matter of hours: “You just have to want to do it.”

The Bartender moved out of Al’s line of sight, letting him look into the mirror as the blue electricity overtook him, giving him the last glimpse he was going to have of his own face in what was probably going to be a very long time. The Bartender felt himself leave that world that was both real and unreal as Al leapt into the future.

The Bartender recognized distantly that Al had leaped into the correct time and place, and considered this for a moment. For the most part, the Bartender worked alone, keeping watch over time and space and keeping an eye on those Leapers who’d interfere with it. His work was solitary, and so Sam’s would have been too, had not the ex-hologram shown up. Leaping in the future would be difficult, more difficult than anything Sam had experienced before, and certainly more difficult than anything Al did on a regular basis working for the Project. But the determined look the ex-Observer had given him at the bar convinced him that at least one of them was made of sterner stuff than they appeared. And the fact that he had even bothered showing up at all, to help out Sam if he thought there was even a shadow of a chance his friend was in trouble...it made the Bartender think that maybe he should go and appeal to the higher authorities for a partner to work with. Time and space was a big place, but if Sam and Al had taught him anything, maybe with two it would not be such a lonely one.


End file.
